End Of Year Lessons About Friday Afternoon Workshops

Contributing Blogger: Mary Hedengren

Last week we held our last weekly workshop of the semester and of the school year. Bittersweet, of course, but it’s nice to take a moment and think about the lessons from the UWC’s adventures in non-tutoring. At our 2013 Symposium, a couple of people asked me about what’s worked and what hasn’t in our Friday afternoon workshop series. Here are the main logistical points that I’ve learned.

Advertise, advertise, advertise:
Start early, and find every possible way to advertise. Try to get the word out to everyone. I tried to pitch the workshops when our consultants visited classrooms, and we made sure that there were announcements for our workshops posted around our writing center as well as on bulletin boards around campus. But you probably need fewer physical fliers than you think you do; use newsletters, department websites and electronic announcement boards to get the word out.

Do your homework:
When figuring out what topics to offer for a workshop, survey students or instructors, see what genres or types of writing are most frequent at your writing center, and ask around the staff to see what people are interested in teaching. Appealing topics can be wonderful.

Get support:
I soon realized that I couldn’t lead every Friday workshop, and I couldn’t even necessarily attend every workshop, so I built a Google Doc with some very talented folk who were willing to help out for a week here and there. Some of them were experienced counselors who loved talking about resumes and cover letters. Some were passionate about grammar. Using the strengths of our writing center staff created better workshops and let the staff really shine.

Branch out:
Along with getting support within your center, you can make connections with other student services. We started partnering with the library’s workshops to talk about how to find evidence and then move from evidence towards an argument. We both have the same goals, and we can refer students to each other.

Don’t sweat the numbers:
Sometimes you’ll have 30 people show up for a workshop and sometimes there will be no one at all. While these numbers can help guide your decisions about what workshops are most useful, don’t read too much into them. Sometimes it’s just a busy week for students. Sometimes there’s a football game. There are a lot of reasons why a session might be less well attended, so thinking broadly.

But do keep track of them:
We started letting students “pre-register” for workshops online, which gave us a rough sense of how many people to expect. Also, we kept track of how many people actually showed up. This let us see which workshops were most popular and it gives us another metric to share in our annual report to the college. Next year, we want to integrate our workshops into our standard tutoring intake system so we can know what sorts of students we’re serving.

One year doesn’t make me an expert, but I do feel as though I’ve learned a lot this past year. Has your writing center produced in-house workshops? What’s been most effective for you? I’d love to know so that next fall, when our workshops start again, I’ll be prepared to learn even more this year.

Mary Hedengren is getting her rhetoric PhD at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research has focused on multicultural writing practices, writing in the disciplines, and writing as an indication of national identity. In addition to blogging, she’s an associate editor at Praxis and is currently the assistant director at UT’s Undergraduate Writing Center.

The Road Map to a Personal Statement

Contributing Blogger: Malia Hamilton

I know this may sound strange for everyone who has to write one, but I love personal statements.

I hated them before I started working at the UWC. Everything about them was so vague. How am I supposed to just state who I am personally? I would wonder. I could just say, “Hello, my name is Malia Hamilton and I am an undergraduate at the University of Tex…” but you’ve already fallen asleep by now, haven’t you?  I hated them because no one gave me a guideline to write them. Personal statements don’t have rubrics or detailed requirements; you’re lucky if you are given a one sentence prompt. But ever since I’ve started working at the UWC, I’ve compiled a strategy to help students write personal statements: a strategy I’m going to share with you.

Whenever I read a personal statement, I look to see if the writer has told me three things: 1) who they were, 2) who they are, and 3) who they want to be. If the writer has effectively incorporated these three stages of themselves into their personal statement, it’s almost always an effective one. I’ve found this to be one of the best ways to organize personal statements, as well as one of the best ways to incorporate all aspects of those occasional prompts that applications send out.

Most prompts look something like this: Tell us your personal and professional goals. What are the experiences you have had that led you to these goals? Why do you want to be a part of/why are you deserving of this program? What sort of obstacles have you overcome to reach this point?

Now, don’t panic, and don’t start to nod off either. Let’s take a moment to filter these into my three categories and elaborate on them.

Who I Was – Set the stage for who you are. Have you wanted to do this since you were young? If not, what did you want to do then? Describe the path that led you to this decision. This is also an opportunity to explain obstacles you have overcome, such as financial struggles or the loss of someone close to you, or other things that you think are important that do not appear in your resume.

Who I Am – I like to think of this as elaborating on the most important things in your resume. Explain what you’re passionate about by talking about the experiences you have had, especially the ones that relate to the program you are applying to. Be specific! Don’t just say, “Working at an animal shelter made me more dependable.”  Tell your reader that you are responsible for making sure the animals are locked up securely for the night; they will understand that that means that you are dependable. Show, don’t tell. The way to make your statement stand out is by telling a story about something you went through that shows something about your character – that way they’ll remember you. You’ll be the girl who rescued the cat that ran into the dog pens at the shelter, not just another “reliable” applicant.

Who I Want to Be – Think goals! What do you want to do with your life? Your reader wants to see if their program will help you achieve your goals, so be specific about what you want to be and how you think their program will help you get there. Also, show your reader that you want to be a part of their program, not just any old program. This is going to require a little bit of research, but you’ve already been doing that to decide where you want to apply, right?  Talk specifically about the aspects (i.e. faculty, renown, etc.) that you are most excited about. This will show your reader that you do want to be a part of their program, which is what they want.

See? It’s not so bad, is it?  Just explain who you were, who you are, and who you want to be, and remember to always be specific, and you will craft a masterful personal statement. Also, stopping by your local writing center couldn’t hurt.

Go check out Jacob Pietsch’s entry on personal statements. He offers some excellent advice about approaching your first draft. Good luck on your applications!

Malia Hamilton is currently in her third year as an undergraduate at UT Austin, majoring in Plan II, International Relations and Global Studies, and Government. She has been working as a consultant at the Undergraduate Writing Center for one year.  She is working on her honors thesis: a collection of short stories set in an alternate America.

When a Facetious Prank Leads to a Sad Truth

Contributing Blogger: Mary Hedengren

I came early to the writing center Monday morning. Very early. I had to be there before anyone else so that I could slip back to my office and drag out an Ikea bag— the big, blue Ikea bag—full of books. Under a single panel of lights, I went about my clandestine work in front of our writing center’s large double bookshelves.

To start out, I took books down. I didn’t want to take any books that anyone would miss for a consultation, so I removed the 2^nd edition of ACS but not the third, and I left an assortment of handbooks in case someone had a preference for Penguin or Peason or Hacker. But though I left most of the books on the shelf, I had opened up significant gaps, and into those gaps I unloaded the contents of my Ikea bag.

Very first I put up the complete “Books Written by Shatner” section, right next to the dictionaries and thesauri. Then I added the not-inconsequential 1970s fantasy series of Gor, from Tarnsmen of Gor to Blood Brothers of Gor, all of them boasting covers of impossibly fit and improbably clothed heroes . Finally, I added the last category, “Pastel Paperbacks,” which involved mostly, but not entirely, romance novels. It was almost time for opening. I surveyed my work and added, as a last consideration, carefully handwritten labels for my sections, mirroring the labeling of our typical sections.

Then I went back to my office and waited for someone to say something. And waited. And waited.

I hung out in the break room and I asked consultants if they had seen any good April Fool’s jokes. Nothing. I left the books up Tuesday, and sent out an email to the staff alerting them to the new resources on the bookshelf and reminding them to make sure everyone gets access to the new books. Nothing. Thursday I finally took the books down.

 

“What’s with the big bag?” someone asked me.

“I’m taking down the books I put up for April Fool’s.”

“Oh, what books?”

“Okay—we’ll start with global issues before talking about punctuation.”

 

In telling this story, it’s easy for me to blame the consultants. It’s not just that I wasted a fine prank, but I was disheartened to see that our bookshelves are not being regularly used. I’ve thought a lot about the books on these bookshelves, which include not only handbooks and dictionaries, but also resources for ELL students, peer-tutoring texts, and first-rate guides to writing in all sorts of disciplines. When I go to conferences, I scan the publishers’ tables looking for texts that I think the staff would enjoy, and when I come home with new works, I bring them to the break room first so that the consultants can have a first look at them before the books go on the shelf. Where, it appears, they are never used again.

Why should the books be used? Our consultants are competent. They’re well trained and experienced in peer tutoring. They often make use of our excellent “quick tips” handouts. Getting out a book with which they may or may not be familiar, to look for some bit of information or advice that may or may not be there is not necessarily the best use of time during a consultation. So what purpose do our big bookshelves serve for them in the course of a regular week of consultations?

There are two potential administrative answers to this problem, as far as I can see from my post-prank perspective.

1. Not every book needs to be used every day. Some resources are just resources. If someone wants to learn about the history of writing center research, or if they’re working on a special project on peer tutoring, or if they’re really, really motivated to learn more about ESL consultations, they can read some of our specialty books, but these books can be available without being a daily necessity.
2. One book is a resource, three dozen books are decoration. One reason why no one noticed the extra books on our shelves may be that we have many duplicates, old editions, and free desk copies on our bookshelves. There are books that were required in our freshman English courses years and years ago, as well as handbooks of style from yesteryear. By having so many books on our shelves, we have made it harder to find and access the most useful texts. One thing that might ameliorate the tendency for consultants’ eyes to glaze over the shelf would be to clear out some of the less-useful books or create a shelf for the “all stars” of our writing center resources: one or two handbooks, a good dictionary and thesaurus, one or two texts about peer review, a couple of essential WID books. Ask consultants what sort of sources they use most or would like to use, and isolate these somehow.

Whenever I have a joke fall flat, I remember my old sketch comedy days, and remember that, as I tell consultees, audience is everything.  I feel like I learned a lot about my audience’s use of sources and why this particular prank can highlight something about how the consultants and I view our writing center resources.

Mary Hedengren is getting her rhetoric PhD at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research has focused on multicultural writing practices, writing in the disciplines, and writing as an indication of national identity. In addition to blogging, she’s an associate editor at Praxis and is currently the assistant director at UT’s Undergraduate Writing Center.

Ending with a Bang: Writing Thought-Provoking Conclusions

Contributing Blogger: Regina Mills

I don’t know about you, but conclusions have been one of the most difficult parts of the writing process for me. Sometimes my conclusion doesn’t seem to match my claims in the body or even the thesis I offered in the introduction. I want to end on something amazing so badly that I write the introduction to a new paper that I have not really discussed. While bold, it’s not a very strong way to end a paper. In order to avoid this issue, I have really focused on the last couple sentences of my paper.

If it is essential to hook your audience in at the beginning of your introduction, then it is equally crucial to a close with both
1) a sense of further need for exploration and
2) a feeling that things have ‘come full-circle.’

There are several good websites that offer advice about the conclusion as a whole (such as here and a video here), but for the purpose of this post, I will only talk about the very last sentences of this elusive paragraph. I like to think of these as ‘exit-hooks’ since they keep the reader’s attention on the topic, even as you signal the end of your own discussion about it.

Here are a few exit-hook suggestions you might try in your next paper:

Coming full circle: This strategy requires you to connect back to the hook you used in your introduction. So if you started with an anecdote about why your professor bans technology in her classroom (as a student of mine did very successfully), you could come full circle by returning to that anecdote and connecting to what you discussed and why it matters.

Possible pitfalls: Your hook may not have the possibility of returning full circle, so attempting to may make it sound forced; or perhaps the connection you try to make doesn’t make sense and thus leaves the reader on a negative note of confusion.

Provocative Question/Statement: End with a question or statement that takes what you have argued and asks the reader to think beyond it. This is especially helpful in answering the “so what?” question, and it gives us a reason to find out more about the topic or to explore different aspects that you did not have space to explore sufficiently.

Possible pitfalls: it’s very easy to have this sound like a 3^rd-grader asked it (ex. “What do you think Shakespeare meant to say?”); try not to direct your question directly to the reader. The question may also be leading and thus not provoke multiple answers to be explored

Statistic/Quotation: One way that you can provoke additional thought about your paper is to offer another quotation or statistic (maybe one you already discussed but maybe one you haven’t) that presents an answer to the “so what?” question. This quotation might be a question that a scholar or author has asked, thus giving it more perceived authority

Possible pitfalls: may seem like you are offering new information (a big no-no in a conclusion); you may forget or lack an explanation of the statistic or quotation.

These are just a few ways that you can clinch your argument and leave your audience wanting to learn more about your topic. Exit-hooks can be difficult because they must connect back to the rest of your paper very well. Since they are the last words in the paper (and can’t be explained by another paragraph), it may be a good idea to try out a couple of kinds, as papers in different disciplines may need to end radically differently in order to succeed. But once you find that successful line(s), your audience will be blown away.

Regina Mills is a PhD student in English (Ethnic and Third World Literature) at UT-Austin who works at the Undergraduate Writing Center and is an Assistant Instructor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing. She has a Master’s of Education in Secondary English Education from Arizona State University. Her current research interests are in Latin@ literature, Central American memoirs, immigrant literature, feminist theory, and auto/biography studies.